Alistair's History Guide

(Ted Suehsdorf writing, I had a previous blogspot, so the author name was different)

I found this blog (http://africanhistory.about.com/b/) under a top 25 list for best History blogs. I find it quite cool that a lot of the blog matches up to the current date. Literally, February 6, for example, the post will be about an event in African History that occurred on that date. It's almost as if one could treat every day to come as something to remember in the past, thanks to the blog. On January 17th of 2013, Alistair Boddy-Evans wrote that on this day in the year 1919, The Bantu Women's League protested against Pass Laws; essentially fighting for equality among men.  Specifically, they were protesting to not have to carry pass books/registration documents around with them, just like the men. Although he writes that it took 3 years to accomplish the goals, it was a significant protest. I read down the list of the top blogs and immediately chose this blog because my knowledge of African History revolves around Apartheid, some slavery and not much else. I love that instead of focusing on the bigger realms of African History only, this blog offers day to day (pretty much) info throughout the year. The years are constantly being mixed. (ex. January 11th, 1879, the Anglo-Zulu war began. The Brits vs. the Zulus, fighting over the demand for the Zulus to stand down.) As I read further and further into the blog I've noticed that he doesn't ramble on forever. In fact he writes smaller portions and then offers many links for people to dig deeper. (Seems like the right way to go when trying to be such an ambitious blogger!) Later on he also speaks to his readers; he asks, for the new year, what people would like to read more often about - and people responded and asked their two cents in. They wanted biographies and info on African Kingdoms. He then recaps his year of blogging in 2012 and shows that the most popular entries were on Apartheid, African Colonialism, Slavery and biographies on Nelson Mandela, Idi Amin (Ugand(an?) past-president) and Steve Biko. Really brilliant stuff on here. Easy to read and not get lost in opinionated onslaughts.
Ted